Missing Persons Advocacy Network is an organisation that provides support and advice to families and friends of missing persons.

Social media has always been a powerful tool to spread a message, fast. Now, Facebook’s facial recognition technology can help even more.

Owen Redman

Missing:February 21st 1991

Missing from:Brunswick, VIC

Sevak Simonian

Missing:October 24th 2014

Missing from:Belrose, NSW

Nick Veljanovski

Missing:June 11th 2014

Missing from:Bundeena, NSW

Naz Woldemichael

Missing:October 19th 2016

Missing from:North Hobart, TAS

Tej Chitnis

Missing:April 27th 2016

Missing from:Healesville, VIC

Lorrin Whitehead

Missing:February 8th 2013

Missing from:Bannockburn, VIC

Bung Siriboon

Missing:June 2nd 2011

Missing from:Boronia, VIC

Zac Barnes

Missing:November 12th 2016

Missing from:Metford, NSW

Terry Lloyd

Missing:November 24th 2015

Missing from:Pilliga Forest, NSW

Christian Velten

Missing:2003

Missing from:MALI

All you have to do is Add Friend. That’s it.
Facebook will do the rest.

Your feed won’t be filled with posts or images.
These profiles will be an invisible friend sitting in your friendship list.

But it might help bring someone home.

Does facial recognition work in videos?

Yes, photos and videos.

Do I have to tag these people in my photos?

No. Facebook automatically scans for their face in your photos and the notification is sent to their profile.

What happens after they are recognised?

The administrators of the missing person’s profile (friends or family) will receive the notification that their loved one has been seen.

What if someone wanted to use this tech to keep tabs on me?

They can’t. The very reason Facebook introduced this tech was to stop that from happening.

For example: If Anna has an ex who wanted to keep tabs on her, he could make a new profile using photos of her. However this tech would then alert Anna that someone has made a profile using her image and she could address the problem.

How can we be sure that these people are really missing?

Each profile with the watermark ensures that the individual has been reported as missing to police, and that the family and friends have concerns for their welfare as verified by communication to MPAN.

I want to help, but I don’t add friends on Facebook if I don’t actually know them. Who will be looking at my profile if I do add an Invisible Friend?

All verified accounts will be managed by Missing Persons Advocacy Network (MPAN). Profiles of community members who have friended an Invisible Friend will not be viewed.

How can an Invisible Friend be searching that many photos?

The automatic tagging not only works for friends but also friends of friends. Meaning when any of your friends post photos with the audience set to friends of friends, they’re also joining the search.

Over 100 people go missing every day in Australia.
That’s one person every 14 minutes.

There are around 2,000 long-term missing people in Australia.

When one person goes missing, at least 12 others are directly
impacted emotionally, financially and psychologically.

350,000,000 photos are uploaded to Facebook every day.

Facebook’s facial recognition is 98% accurate.
The FBI’s is only 85%.

Because of Facebook every person in the world is now connected by 3.5 degrees of separation.

MPAN is an an unfunded non-profit run entirely upon donations.
If you’d like to contribute, please click here.